VOLUME 3, CHRONICLE 10: 4 YEARS IN SUNDOWN, NOW & THEN. As I say good morning to another night, I’m struggling with do I need to say something or do I have something to say? John Steinbeck said, “I write it & take my chances”, I’ll do the same & trust it’s the latter.
     In April of 2022, the doctor confirmed my mom had dementia & I & my family, because dementia isn’t a solo disease, began a fight that, because I needed an opponent & because of the color chosen by groups dealing with this invasive species, I named the Purple Knight in a town called Sundown. The starting point, the origin story, posted on this day in 2022, from a couch in Pearl, Mississippi.
     That’s the then that gets me to now, 48 months later. So, why note the fight in paper & pen? Why, to some, turn in my man card & expose my vulnerabilities?
      Two reasons, the selfish, because writing is a coping mechanism that I haven’t employed, along with some quiet time shooting from the free throw line, nearly enough. Secondly, the altruistic, that whether one ascribes to the riffs of Luke & his contribution to the Gospels or Spider-Man’s uncle, if you have a gift, in my case an ability to collide nouns & verbs that make occasional sense, you better use it. I figure if I’m feeling something in this purple cloaked fight, someone else is, has, or eventually will too.
      That someone, though the trails & trials differ, the landmarks I pass or set up like Jacob’s Pillar, are in their past, present, or future. My scars are their version of Waze.
       I’ve discovered that the line is thin between anticipation of hoping for a good day for my mom & the desperation of hoping for a good day for my mom. On that thin line resides an obligation to tell my story for those that can’t express theirs, for those that need to know their feelings aren’t exclusive to them.   
        An obligation because, though it’s hard sometimes & as Miss Julie can testify, ripping my chest open & revealing my soul is not my forte. Also,because though I’ve tried to out run both Dr. Luke & Peter Parker’s uncle, I’m eventually one step slower.  
      I slept on the origin story’s couch in Pearl, Mississippi 8 times over these 4 years. Half the time in anticipation of turning the obligation of my mom’s care to my sister for 3 or 4 weeks. The other half, in what sounds callous unless one has jousted with the Purple Knight, in desperation because the obligation of care was returning serve.
      I’ve thrown over tables by delivered words or thoughts in the synagogue between my ears. I’ve made some digs angrily, sarcastically, in defense of self & have found those digs only lead to lost ground.
      I’ve stared down the dude in my mirror & looked in his face of lines, cracks, & faults that reveal with a purple caste the black & white of truths & lies & the grays of the in-betweens. I took solo wanders down Gary Avenue & in front of a church in Fairfield, Alabama & wondered what might have been clad in Tigers purple & gold on a Clements Field Friday night. 
      Among my wandering & wondering, a trip down the street where the mailbox reads 1432. How to answer a question, the same question, asked 20 times in a day like it’s the first time while wondering how a dance routine from 1952 can be remembered & named step for step.
      I’ve had the Purple Paladin dent my shield while I tried to fix the unfixable before giving way to accepting that today’s good day is as good as can be hoped for tomorrow. Finally coming to grips with the dents in my armor & my green-gold & purple bruising that reveals that some days are easier but ain’t none of ‘em easy.
      Every sundown claims a piece, no matter how tiny, of my mom. I’m stunned that her memory can recall Jimmy Piersall in Rickwood Field’s outfield or Fireball Robert’s on a long ago Sunday at the now razed Birmingham International Raceway like this indigo nemesis has razed my mom’s short term memory as she can’t remember at 1:00 what she had for lunch at noon.
     Desperately hoping a visit by great-granddaughters or this week’s celebration of her birthday finds the Purple Knight hasn’t RSVP’d & memories won’t be taking a road to nowhere. Agonizing, desperately trying to reconcile with God why my mom is still here. Desperately agonizing to reconcile a pro-life stance with prayers of “God, my mom’s had a good run”. Desperately agonizing on nursing home visits when my mom asks when I’m taking her home with answers that distract her elsewhere.
       I still take the same church stairway every Sunday & Wednesday. Now I bang that old metal grate that served as 1960s safety to hear the clanging reverb of my youth to recharge & remember why I’m doing what I do, no matter how Quixotic or heroic my lance tilting at the Purple Knight might be.
     The line I’ve found, between Sunday, or any other day ending in “Y”, being Heaven & being Hell is thin too. I’m learning to rest when the opportunity is offered because as dipped in testosterone tough as Bon Jovi’s lyric “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” sounds, without rest I’m hurrying along my reservation with the long sleep.
      I’m learning that asking for prayer is both a celebration & strengthening of my weakness. I’m learning to be grateful for the manna, the bread of Heaven’s sky. To be grateful for coworkers that are enduring their own sundowns & the times we sidle up to the Sundown dive bar in my office, toe the brass rail & empty a glass of ourselves.
      I’m learning what they don’t go over enough in premarital counseling, that the vow for better or worse is just that, not a suggestion, not an option, no pivot to a more peaceful valley, no family express pass around the trouble offered like passes parents expect buying their child a $500 ball bat & expecting it to correct a $10 work ethic.
     I’m learning to live in anticipation of one of God’s beautiful sundown masterpieces & I’m learning to give Him my desperation for the other, uglier sundown. And now, before the road takes us back to then, I’ve learned that, regardless of today’s result, tomorrow, I’ll have to do it again & apply once again what I call the “5 Ups”. Get up, Pray up, Dress up, Show up, & Never give up because sundown is coming with every good morning to greet another night & some of ‘em are easier viewing but ain’t none of ‘em easy…and now, a return to ‘22 & the first days in Sundown…

SUNDOWN & MOM, A STUDY IN PURPLE, Pearl, MS, 4:06AM: Twilight, the end of the day, a strange place to begin. It seems sundown will be a permanent destination, my mom has been diagnosed with dementia & sundown is duplicitous, beautiful & a rotten time of day. Sundowning, an indication this intruder is in its slow, early stages but some days it gets late quickly & at twilight, like 101 Dalmatians barking, the sun sinks & barks & a stranger appears in my mothers voice & skin & bones. It won’t get better, neither will my affection for purple. Purple, the color chosen to highlight this villain of the mind, the color that has caused me, angry & bewildered, to flip tables in my head’s synagogue. Purple, the color of bruising, only this time, it won’t change to the healing green/gold shade of an egg that’s boiled too long. This time it will only go deeper, to indigo, to violet, to gone. This week I took mom to see friends, family, to our old house where she recalled every neighbor’s house by name but can’t remember what she just ate, & to church where she hugged generation 3 bye & then we walked down a staircase we first walked together in 1968 so she could give her 4th generation the same hug. At 2:36 on Tuesday afternoon, she parked & got out from behind the wheel for likely the last time. One more meal at an ancient kitchen table where my mom balanced budgets & accused my dad of running a not for profit paint company & he responded by telling her if she squeezed a buffalo nickel, one would find the buffalo on its knees. Yesterday, I brought my mom this far on the road to my sister’s. I heard stories, new to her, old to me, the needle on her 33 ⅓ vinyl stuck. We detoured off I-59 through her hometown, past the remains of where Stella sold dresses & Frank cut hair, past her high school & Clements Field where she rooted for & I dreamed of wearing, in a twist of irony, purple & being a Tiger & then under a pedestrian bridge. On toward Gary Avenue, home to Routmans Shoes, Bargain Town, Homecoming parades, & a furniture store that sold a once young couple a now ancient kitchen table & circled back to Carnegie & the town park, still guarded on one side by a building that used to be our church, the church where she & dad said “I do” & did for over 52 years & a parking lot where in a long gone shack, my parents set up housekeeping as newlyweds & student ministers. Up the Parkway, this sinister foe allowing her to correctly call turns not taken for years but not recall two hours ago, past an empty plot where once existed the hospital mom, my sister, & I were born, where Nurse Bailey would rhythmically inoculate with her right hand & jam a sucker in the mouth with her left & mom watched her son’s head stitched together 5 times. Down the hill on 47th past her & my dad’s first house, a couple of lefts & a right & onto Avenue H & the house she walked out of to Baker School & Fairfield High, to Montevallo College, to matrimony. Back to I-59, memories in the rear view that may or may not be in view much longer. Today, she’s on to new memories, a college graduation, soon holding my sister’s first grandchild, maybe one of God’s masterpieces in a pink & orange & purple sundown. Me, I’ll be heading east toward an Appalachian sundown in a few while she goes west to a Texas flatlands sunset & maybe while you’re reading this, I’ll take that detour again, to right those tables I’ve flipped, to remember, & Monday I’ll call to wish her a happy birthday & in a few weeks I’ll call on Mother’s Day. Calls she will probably remember but may not, calls I’ll make because I’ll remember & be glad I did because the pains of discipline & regret hurt equally but regret is issued with no expiration date, because I’m convinced that today’s deposits are cashed out on some tomorrow, because I’m not sure who will return in June. So today, I’ll drive by Clements Field & wonder what might have been in Tiger gold & purple, & God will paint two Lone Star sundowns, one in stunning shades from His Crayola 64 box & one draped in purple…